Opera

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This article is about the art form. For other uses, see Opera (disambiguation).

The Paris Opéra, one of the world's most famous opera houses.

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text
(called a libretto) and musical score.[1] Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition.[2]
Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery and costumes
and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house,
accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble.

Opera started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in
Florence around 1597) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in
France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century.
However, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except
France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form
of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s.
Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera
seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro, Don
Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute, a landmark in the German tradition.

The first third of the 19th century saw the highpoint of the bel canto style, with Rossini,
Donizetti and Bellini all creating works that are still performed today. It also saw the advent of
Grand Opera typified by the works of Meyerbeer. The mid to late 19th century was a "golden
age" of opera, led and dominated by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. The popularity of
opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to
Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions
emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century
saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and
Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the
rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond
the circle of opera fans. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Operatic terminology
• 2 History
o 2.1 Origins
o 2.2 Italian opera
 2.2.1 The Baroque era
 2.2.2 Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart
 2.2.3 Bel canto, Verdi and verismo
o 2.3 German-language opera
o 2.4 French opera
o 2.5 English-language opera
o 2.6 Russian opera
o 2.7 Other national operas
o 2.8 Contemporary, recent, and Modernist trends
 2.8.1 Modernism
 2.8.2 Other trends
 2.8.3 From musicals back towards opera
o 2.9 Acoustic enhancement with speakers
• 3 Operatic voices
o 3.1 Vocal classifications
o 3.2 Historical use of voice parts
o 3.3 Famous singers
• 4 Cinema
• 5 See also
o 5.1 Lists
o 5.2 Related topics
• 6 Notes
• 7 References
• 8 Further reading

• 9 External links

[edit] Operatic terminology

The words of an opera are known as the libretto (literally "little book"). Some composers,
notably Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close
collaboration with their librettists, e.g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Traditional opera, often
referred to as "number opera," consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving
passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech,[3] and aria
(an "air" or formal song) in which the characters express their emotions in a more structured
melodic style. Duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment
on the action. In some forms of opera, such as Singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-
opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages
occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso. During the
Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms: secco (dry) recitative,
accompanied only by continuo, which was usually a harpsichord and a cello; or accompagnato
(also known as strumentato) in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. By the 19th
century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and
Richard Wagner revolutionised opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and
recitative in his quest for what he termed "endless melody". Subsequent composers have tended
to follow Wagner's example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake's Progress have
bucked the trend. The terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in section
3 below.[4]

[edit] History
[edit] Origins

Main article: Origins of opera

Claudio Monteverdi

The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or
"labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and
dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered
opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite
circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly,
Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity
characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus"
parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera
was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later
work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present
day. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio
Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607.[5]

[edit] Italian opera

Main article: Italian opera

[edit] The Baroque era

Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long; in 1637 the idea of a "season"
(Carnival) of publicly-attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi
had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His most important
follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas,
broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities,
sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by Venice's Arcadian Academy
which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre
of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century.
Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was
reserved for what came to be called opera buffa.

George Frideric Handel, 1733

Illustration for title page of the 1774 Paris edition of Orfeo ed Euridice

Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately
unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera." One reason for this was an attempt to
attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still less cultured than the
nobility, to the public opera houses. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in
a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte, (as indeed,
such plots had always been) a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as
intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic
genre of "intermezzi", which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and '20s, were initially
staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were
soon being offered as separate productions.

Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco
recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic
singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of
the hero was usually written for the castrato voice; castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino, as
well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni, became in great demand throughout Europe
as opera seria ruled the stage in every country except France. Indeed, Farinelli was the most
famous singer of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the
norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences.
Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in the operas of
Mozart, who wrote in Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera
seria include Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Porpora.[6]

[edit] Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart

Mozart K. 527

Overture to Don Giovanni (1787), one of Mozart's most well-known pieces. (6:49
minutes)
Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly
trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew
attacks. Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for
Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and
that all the various elements —music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging— must
be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò
Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to really
succeed and to leave a permanent imprint upon the history of opera, however, was Gluck. Gluck
tried to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is illustrated in the first of his "reform" operas,
Orfeo ed Euridice, where vocal lines lacking in the virtuosity of (say) Handel's works are
supported by simple harmonies and a notably richer-than-usual orchestral presence throughout.

Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in
particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a
superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably
Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni (in collaboration with Lorenzo Da
Ponte) which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. But Mozart's
contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such
fine works as Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form
back to life again.[7]

[edit] Bel canto, Verdi and verismo

Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini, 1886 (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome)
La donna è mobile

Enrico Caruso sings "La donna è mobile", from Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto
(1908)
No Pagliaccio non son

Aria from Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Performed by Enrico Caruso

The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the
operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante and many others. Literally "beautiful
singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel
canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control.

Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe
Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing
spirit of Italian nationalism in the post-Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the
patriotic movement (although his own politics were perhaps not quite so radical). In the early
1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. But
he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps the greatest French Grand Opera, Don
Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which
reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century.

After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style
introduced by Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci that
came virtually to dominate the world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo
Puccini's La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such as Berio and
Nono, have experimented with modernism.[8]

[edit] German-language opera

Main articles: Opera in German and German opera

Illustration inspired by Wagner's music drama Das Rheingold

Richard Wagner in 1871

The first German opera was Dafne, composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627 (the music has not
survived). Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th
century. Nevertheless, native forms developed too. In 1644 Sigmund Staden produced the first
Singspiel, a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken
dialogue. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg
presented German operas by Keiser, Telemann and Handel. Yet many of the major German
composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun, Hasse and later Gluck, chose
to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian.

Mozart's Singspiele, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an
important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition
was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the
French Revolution. Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to
the dominance of Italian bel canto. His Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a
supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include Marschner, Schubert,
Schumann and Lortzing, but the most significant figure was undoubtedly Wagner.

Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history.
Starting under the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of
opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting.
In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des
Nibelungen and Parsifal, he abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a
seamless flow of "endless melody". He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra,
creating scores with a complex web of leitmotivs, recurring themes often associated with the
characters and concepts of the drama; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical
conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new
philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from
Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth,
exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted.
Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy
burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly
new directions. He first won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra, in
which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der
Rosenkavalier, where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became as important an influence as
Wagner. Strauss continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti
by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right up until Capriccio in 1942. Other composers who
made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include Zemlinsky,
Hindemith, Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of Arnold
Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the section on modernism.[9]

[edit] French opera

Main article: French opera

Scene from the original, 1885 production of Jules Massenet's Le Cid.

In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions, a separate French tradition was founded by
the Italian Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of King Louis XIV. Despite his foreign origin, Lully
established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with
Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique, a form in
which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also show a
concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th
century, Lully's most important successor was Jean-Philippe Rameau, who composed five
tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as opéra-ballet, all notable
for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was
persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of
Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of
the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique. This was the
equivalent of the German singspiel, where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable
examples in this style were produced by Monsigny, Philidor and, above all, Grétry. During the
Revolutionary period, composers such as Méhul and Cherubini, who were followers of Gluck,
brought a new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in any case.

By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian bel canto,
especially after the arrival of Rossini in Paris. Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found the new
genre of Grand Opera, a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner, Giacomo
Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer's works, such as Les Huguenots emphasised virtuoso singing and
extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands
of Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold and Adolphe Adam. In this climate, the operas of the French-born
composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens, the
culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred
years.

Carmen: Chanson du toréador

Pasquale Amato's 1911 rendition of the Toréador's song from Georges Bizet's Carmen (1875).

In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach created operetta with witty and cynical
works such as Orphée aux enfers, as well as the opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Charles Gounod
scored a massive success with Faust; and Bizet composed Carmen, which, once audiences
learned to accept its blend of Romanticism and realism, became the most popular of all opéra
comiques. Massenet, Saint-Saëns and Delibes all composed works which are still part of the
standard repertory. At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to
the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many
French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Perhaps the most interesting
response came from Claude Debussy. As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in
Debussy's unique opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative.
But the drama is understated, enigmatic and completely unWagnerian.

Other notable 20th century names include Ravel, Dukas, Roussel and Milhaud. Francis Poulenc
is one of the very few post-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include
Dialogues des carmélites) have gained a foothold in the international repertory. Olivier
Messiaen's lengthy sacred drama Saint François d'Assise (1983) has also attracted widespread
attention.[10]

[edit] English-language opera

Main article: Opera in English

Henry Purcell

In England, opera's antecedent was the 17th century jig. This was an afterpiece which came at
the end of a play. It was frequently libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of
dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad
operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French masque was gaining a firm hold at the
English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen
before. Inigo Jones became the quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to
dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In
Ben Jonson's Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner,
stilo recitativo".[11]

The approach of the English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that
may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656, the dramatist Sir William
Davenant produced The Siege of Rhodes. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he
asked several of the leading composers (Lawes, Cooke, Locke, Coleman and Hudson) to set
sections of it to music. This success was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru
(1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were encouraged by Oliver
Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With the English Restoration, foreign (especially
French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673, Thomas Shadwell's Psyche, patterned on the
1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully. William
Davenant produced The Tempest in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a
Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson).[11] About 1683, John Blow composed
Venus and Adonis, often thought of as the first true English-language opera.

Stay, Prince and hear

A scene from Purcell's Dido and Æneas. The witches' messenger, in the form of Mercury
himself, attempts to convince Æneas to leave Carthage.
Blow's immediate successor was the better known Henry Purcell. Despite the success of his
masterwork Dido and Aeneas (1689), in which the action is furthered by the use of Italian-style
recitative, much of Purcell's best work was not involved in the composing of typical opera, but
instead he usually worked within the constraints of the semi-opera format, where isolated scenes
and masques are contained within the structure of a spoken play, such as Shakespeare in Purcell's
The Fairy-Queen (1692) and Beaumont and Fletcher in The Prophetess (1690) and Bonduca
(1696). The main characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical scenes, which
means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. Despite these
hindrances, his aim (and that of his collaborator John Dryden) was to establish serious opera in
England, but these hopes ended with Purcell's early death at the age of 36.

Thomas Arne

Following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England dwindled for several decades. A revived
interest in opera occurred in the 1730s which is largely attributed to Thomas Arne, both for his
own compositions and for alerting Handel to the commercial possibilities of large-scale works in
English. Arne was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic
opera, with his greatest success being Thomas and Sally in 1760. His opera Artaxerxes (1762)
was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success, holding
the stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of Italian opera, he was
perhaps the only English composer at that time who was able to move beyond the Italian
influences and create his own unique and distinctly English voice. His modernized ballad opera,
Love in a Village (1762), began a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th century.
Charles Burney wrote that Arne introduced "a light, airy, original, and pleasing melody, wholly
different from that of Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either pillaged or
imitated".

Besides Arne, the other dominating force in English opera at this time was George Frideric
Handel, whose opera serias filled the London operatic stages for decades, and influenced most
home-grown composers, like John Frederick Lampe, who wrote using Italian models. This
situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including in the work of Michael
William Balfe, and the operas of the great Italian composers, as well as those of Mozart,
Beethoven and Meyerbeer, continued to dominate the musical stage in England.

The Mikado (Lithograph)

The only exceptions were ballad operas, such as John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), musical
burlesques, European operettas, and late Victorian era light operas, notably the Savoy Operas of
W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, all of which types of musical entertainments frequently
spoofed operatic conventions. Sullivan wrote only one grand opera, Ivanhoe (following the
efforts of a number of young English composers beginning about 1876),[11] but he claimed that
even his light operas constituted part of a school of "English" opera, intended to supplant the
French operettas (usually performed in bad translations) that had dominated the London stage
from the mid-19th century into the 1870s. London's Daily Telegraph agreed, describing The
Yeomen of the Guard as "a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and
possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage."[12]

In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of Ralph
Vaughan Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten, who in a series of works that remain in
standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality.
Today composers such as Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad.[13] More
recently Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary
composers from his first opera Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in The
Minotaur. In the 2000s, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera, Michael Nyman, has been
focusing on composing operas, including Facing Goya, Man and Boy: Dada, and Love Counts.
Also in the 20th century, American composers like Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Gian
Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, and Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas
infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as Philip
Glass, Mark Adamo, John Corigliano, Robert Moran, John Coolidge Adams, and Jake Heggie.

[edit] Russian opera

Main article: Russian opera

Feodor Chaliapin as Ivan Susanin in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an
important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy. Many foreign
composers such as Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, and Domenico
Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in
the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians like Maksym Berezovsky and
Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian
was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of
Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich, Yevstigney
Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky.

However, the real birth of Russian opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas A
Life for the Tsar, (1836) and Ruslan and Ludmila (1842). After him in the 19th century in Russia
there were written such operatic masterpieces as Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Alexander
Dargomyzhsky, Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky, Prince Igor by
Alexander Borodin, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and The
Snow Maiden and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the growth
of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general Slavophilism
movement.

In the 20th century the traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including
Sergei Rachmaninov in his works The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini, Igor Stravinsky
in Le Rossignol, Mavra, Oedipus rex, and The Rake's Progress, Sergei Prokofiev in The
Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges, The Fiery Angel, Betrothal in a Monastery, and War and
Peace; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,
Edison Denisov in L'écume des jours, and Alfred Schnittke in Life with an Idiot, and Historia
von D. Johann Fausten.[14]

[edit] Other national operas

Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as zarzuela, which had two
separate flowerings: one from the mid 17th century through the mid 18th century, and another
beginning around 1850. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera
was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the native form.

Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th
century, starting with Bedřich Smetana who wrote eight operas including the internationally
popular The Bartered Bride. Antonín Dvořák, most famous for Rusalka, wrote 13 operas; and
Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in the 20th century for his innovative works
including Jenůfa, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Káťa Kabanová.

The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel, whose works
mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are Hunyadi László
and Bánk bán. The most famous modern Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's
Castle.

The best-known composer of Polish national opera was Stanisław Moniuszko, most celebrated
for the opera Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor).[15] In the 20th century, other
operas created by Polish composers included King Roger by Karol Szymanowski and Ubu Rex
by Krzysztof Penderecki.

Among Dutch composers, Willem Pijper wrote an opera based on the Dutch folktale of
Halewijn, and his pupil Henk Badings composed several radio operas.

[edit] Contemporary, recent, and Modernist trends

[edit] Modernism

Perhaps the most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of
atonality. The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Wagner, and in
particular the Tristan chord. Composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo
Puccini, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more
extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.
Arnold Schoenberg in 1917.
Portrait by Egon Schiele.

Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers, Arnold Schoenberg
and his student Alban Berg, both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development
(as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works,
Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic
harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme, which he
described as: "The voice rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything
being bound together with the time and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated".
[cite this quote]

The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (incomplete at his
death in 1935) share many of the same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined
his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages
of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially
explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music
and plots. Schoenberg's theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly) significant
numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they themselves did not compose using his
techniques.
Stravinsky in 1921.

Composers thus influenced include the Englishman Benjamin Britten, the German Hans Werner
Henze, and the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich. (Philip Glass also makes use of atonality, though
his style is generally described as minimalist, usually thought of as another 20th century
development.)

However, operatic modernism's use of atonality also sparked a backlash in the form of
neoclassicism. An early leader of this movement was Ferruccio Busoni who in 1913 wrote the
libretto for his neoclassical number opera Arlecchino (first performed in 1917).[16] Also among
the vanguard was the Russian Igor Stravinsky. After composing music for the Diaghilev-
produced ballets Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky turned to
neoclassicism, a development culminating in his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927).[17] Well
after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works The Nightingale (1914), and Mavra (1922),
Stravinsky continued to ignore serialist technique and eventually wrote a full-fledged 18th
century-style diatonic number opera The Rake's Progress (1951). His resistance to serialism
(which ended at the death of Schoenberg) proved to be an inspiration for many other composers.
[18]

[edit] Other trends

A common trend throughout the 20th century, in both opera and general orchestral repertoire, is
the use of smaller orchestras as a cost-cutting measure; the grand Romantic-era orchestras with
huge string sections, multiple harps, extra horns, and exotic percussion instruments were no
longer feasible. As government and private patronage of the arts decreased throughout the 20th
century, new works were often commissioned and performed with smaller budgets, very often
resulting in chamber-sized works, and short, one-act operas. Many of Benjamin Britten's operas
are scored for as few as 13 instrumentalists; Mark Adamo's two-act realization of Little Women
is scored for 18 instrumentalists.

Another feature of 20th century opera is the emergence of contemporary historical operas. The
Death of Klinghoffer, Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic by John Adams, and Dead Man
Walking by Jake Heggie exemplify the dramatisation on stage of events in recent living memory,
where characters portrayed in the opera were alive at the time of the premiere performance.
Earlier models of opera generally stuck to more distant history, re-telling contemporary fictional
stories (reworkings of popular plays), or mythical/legendary stories.[19]

The Metropolitan Opera reports that the average age of its patrons is now 60.[citation needed] Many
opera companies have experienced a similar trend, and opera company websites are replete with
attempts to attract a younger audience. This trend is part of the larger trend of greying audiences
for classical music since the last decades of the 20th century.[20] In an effort to attract younger
audiences, the Met offers a student discount on ticket purchases.[21] Major opera companies have
been better able to weather the funding cutbacks, because they can afford to hire star singers
which draw substantial audiences who want to see if their favourite singer will be able to hit their
high "money notes" in the show.

Smaller companies have a more fragile existence, and they usually depend on a "patchwork
quilt" of support from state and local governments, local businesses, and fundraisers.
Nevertheless, some smaller companies have found ways of drawing new audiences. Opera
Carolina offer discounts and happy hour events to the 21–40 year old demographic.[22] In addition
to radio and television broadcasts of opera performances, which have had some success in
gaining new audiences, broadcasts of live performances in HD to movie theatres have shown the
potential to reach new audiences. Since 2006, the Met has broadcast live performances to several
hundred movie screens all over the world.[23]

[edit] From musicals back towards opera

Also by the late 1930s, some musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure. These
works include complex polyphonic ensembles and reflect musical developments of their times.
Porgy and Bess, influenced by jazz styles, and Candide, with its sweeping, lyrical passages and
farcical parodies of opera, both opened on Broadway but became accepted as part of the opera
repertory. Show Boat, West Side Story, Brigadoon, Sweeney Todd, Evita, The Light in the Piazza
and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in opera
houses. Some musicals, beginning with Tommy (1969) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and
continuing through Les Misérables (1980), Rent (1996) and Spring Awakening (2006), use
various operatic conventions, such as through composition, recitative instead of dialogue,
leitmotifs and dramatic stories told predominantly through rock, pop or contemporary music.
[dubious – discuss]

[edit] Acoustic enhancement with speakers

A subtle type of sound electronic reinforcement called acoustic enhancement is used in some
concert halls where operas are performed. Acoustic enhancement systems help give a more even
sound in the hall and prevent "dead spots" in the audience seating area by "...augment[ing] a
hall's intrinsic acoustic characteristics." The systems use "...an array of microphones connected
to a computer [which is] connected to an array of loudspeakers." However, as concertgoers have
become aware of the use of these systems, debates have arisen, because some "...purists maintain
that the natural acoustic sound of [Classical] voices [or] instruments in a given hall should not be
altered."[24]

Kai Harada's article "Opera's Dirty Little Secret" states that opera houses began using electronic
acoustic enhancement systems in the 1990s "...to compensate for flaws in a venue's acoustical
architecture."[25] Despite the uproar that has arisen amongst operagoers, Harada points out that
none of the major opera houses using acoustic enhancement systems "...use traditional,
Broadway-style sound reinforcement, in which most if not all singers are equipped with radio
microphones mixed to a series of unsightly loudspeakers scattered throughout the theatre."
Instead, most opera houses use the sound reinforcement system for acoustic enhancement, and
for subtle boosting of offstage voices, child singers, onstage dialogue, and sound effects (e.g.,
church bells in Tosca or thunder effects in Wagnerian operas).

[edit] Operatic voices

[edit] Vocal classifications

Singers and the roles they play are classified by voice type, based on the tessitura, agility, power
and timbre of their voices. Male singers can be loosely classified by vocal range as bass, bass-
baritone, baritone, tenor and countertenor, and female singers as contralto, mezzo-soprano and
soprano. (Men sometimes sing in the "female" vocal ranges, in which case they are termed
sopranist or countertenor. Of these, only the countertenor is commonly encountered in opera,
sometimes singing parts written for castrati – men neutered at a young age specifically to give
them a higher singing range.) Singers are then classified by voice type – for instance, a soprano
can be described as a lyric soprano, coloratura, soubrette, spinto, or dramatic soprano. These
terms, although not fully describing a singing voice, associate the singer's voice with the roles
most suitable to the singer's vocal characteristics. A particular singer's voice may change
drastically over his or her lifetime, rarely reaching vocal maturity until the third decade, and
sometimes not until middle age.

[edit] Historical use of voice parts

The following is only intended as a brief overview. For the main articles, see soprano,
mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, countertenor and castrato.

The soprano voice has typically been used as the voice of choice for the female protagonist of
the opera since the latter half of the eighteenth century. Earlier, it was common for that part to be
sung by any female voice, or even a castrato. The current emphasis on a wide vocal range was
primarily an invention of the Classical period. Before that, the vocal virtuosity, not range, was
the priority, with soprano parts rarely extending above a high A (Handel, for example, only
wrote one role extending to a high C), though the castrato Farinelli was alleged to possess a top
D (his lower range was also extraordinary, extending to tenor C). The mezzo-soprano, a term of
comparatively recent origin, also has a large repertoire, ranging from the female lead in Purcell's
Dido and Aeneas to such heavyweight roles as Brangäne in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (these
are both roles sometimes sung by sopranos; there is quite a lot of movement between these two
voice-types). For the true contralto, the range of parts is more limited, which has given rise to the
insider joke that contraltos only sing "witches, bitches, and britches" roles. In recent years many
of the "trouser roles" from the Baroque era, originally written for women, and those originally
sung by castrati, have been reassigned to countertenors.

The tenor voice, from the Classical era onwards, has traditionally been assigned the role of male
protagonist. Many of the most challenging tenor roles in the repertory were written during the
bel canto era, such as Donizetti's sequence of 9 Cs above middle C during La fille du régiment.
With Wagner came an emphasis on vocal heft for his protagonist roles, with this vocal category
described as Heldentenor; this heroic voice had its more Italianate counterpart in such roles as
Calaf in Puccini's Turandot. Basses have a long history in opera, having been used in opera seria
in supporting roles, and sometimes for comic relief (as well as providing a contrast to the
preponderance of high voices in this genre). The bass repertoire is wide and varied, stretching
from the comedy of Leporello in Don Giovanni to the nobility of Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle.
In between the bass and the tenor is the baritone, which also varies in weight from say,
Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte to Posa in Verdi's Don Carlos; the actual designation
"baritone" was not used until the mid-nineteenth century.

[edit] Famous singers

The castrato Senesino, c. 1720

Early performances of opera were too infrequent for singers to make a living exclusively from
the style, but with the birth of commercial opera in the mid-17th century, professional performers
began to emerge. The role of the male hero was usually entrusted to a castrato, and by the 18th
century, when Italian opera was performed throughout Europe, leading castrati who possessed
extraordinary vocal virtuosity, such as Senesino and Farinelli, became international stars. The
career of the first major female star (or prima donna), Anna Renzi, dates to the mid-1600s. In the
18th century, a number of Italian sopranos gained international renown and often engaged in
fierce rivalry, as was the case with Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni, who started a fist
fight with one another during a performance of a Handel opera. The French disliked castrati,
preferring their male heroes to be sung by a haute-contre (a high tenor), of which Joseph Legros
was a leading example.[26]

Though opera patronage has decreased in the last century in favor of other arts and media, such
as musicals, cinema, radio, television and recordings, mass media has also supported the
popularity of famous singers such as Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras
("The Three Tenors"), and Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli. Other famous 20th century performers
include Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé, Joan Sutherland, Nellie Melba, Rosa Ponselle,
Beniamino Gigli, Jussi Björling, Feodor Chaliapin and Enrico Caruso.

[edit] Cinema
Major opera houses and production companies have begun broadcasting their performances to
local cinemas throughout the United States and in many other countries. The Metropolitan
Opera, first opened in 1883, began high-definition television transmissions in 2006.[27]. Many of
its performances are also shown live in movie theaters around the world. In 2007, Met
performances were shown in over 424 theaters in 350 U.S. cities. La bohème went out to 671
screens worldwide. The Met remains the only company that transmits all of its performances
live, although in many cases this is only via radio broadcast. San Francisco Opera, founded in
1923, began prerecorded broadcasts in March 2008. As of June 2008, approximately 125 theaters
in 117 U.S. cities carry the broadcast. Their distribution company, Bigger Picture, screens the
operas with the same HD digital cinema projectors used for major Hollywood films.[28] European
opera houses and festivals such as La Scala in Milan, the Salzburg Festival, La Fenice in Venice
and the Maggio Musicale in Florence have also broadcast their productions to 91 theaters in 90
U.S. cities since 2006.[29][30]The emergence of the Internet is also seemingly affecting the way in
which audiences consume opera. In a first for the genre, in 2009 British Opera house
Glyndebourne made available online a full digital video download of Wagner’s Tristan und
Isolde, filmed two years previously[31].

[edit] See also

Opera portal
Main article: Outline of opera

[edit] Lists

• Glossary of musical terminology

• List of opera companies
• List of important operas – an annotated, chronological, selected list of operas which are
included for their historical significance, widespread popularity, or both.
• List of major opera composers – an annotated compilation of the most frequently named
composers on ten lists published by opera experts.
• List of opera genres
• List of opera directors
• List of opera festivals
• List of opera houses
• List of operas by title – an alphabetical list by title of operas with Wikipedia articles.
• The opera corpus – an extended list of more than 1900 works by more than 500
composers.
 • Voice type, the classification of singers by the tessitura, weight, and timbre of their
voices.

[edit] Related topics

• Comic opera
• Chinese opera
• Dance
• French opera
• German opera
• Italian opera
• Music
• Musical theatre
• Orchestra
• Orchestral enhancement
• Persian opera
• Polish opera
• Russian opera